For over 25 years, the foundation of Paul P.’s practice has been a series of portraits of anonymous young men, their images appropriated from gay erotic magazines produced between the late 1960s and the early 1980s; a period bracketed by the beginning of gay liberation and the onset of the AIDS crisis. The head-and-shoulders format he favours constricts the libidinal pull of the source material, directing attention instead toward the models’ expressions of youthful reticence and self-knowledge.
His exhibition at his London gallery includes other works featuring bats emerging from dense clouds, laundry strung against a hazy sky, and a wave slipping into shore at night: subjects in which fading light renders beauty both transient and luminous.
Image credits:
Paul P.
Untitled, 2025
oil on linen
35 x 27 cm – 13 3/4 x 10 5/8 in
© Paul P., courtesy Maureen Paley, London